Woke up at 3:30 today after falling asleep near 11. I took my alarm and shut it off before ever waking up at all, and found it today underneath my body (which is always funny.)
I’m always up for 4.5 hours of sleep, though I was trying for 3 to see what happens.
This morning I’m working on a presentation, but like all weekends, am a little bored.
This morning I posted a little note on Twitter…
No disrespect to President Obama, but awarding the Peace Prize based on the “idea” he’s changing diplomacy w/o any proper effects is odd/bad
Some peeps hit me up, privately and publicly, to tell me either A) Obama totally has changed the world (one point of view which seems to be extreme leftist) or B ) this isn’t the first time the Nobel committee has awarded based on potential merit or pushing people in the right direction.
It really left me to think about why it frustrated me so much. Sure the (A) group of people are going to be Pro-bama no matter what, just as the Fox News watching chest thumpers were Pro Bush no matter what. The (B) group made me realize, the Nobel nominating group seems to be more like old media and old organizations than anyone had realized.
There’s this notion that media is owned by its creator, and once you send it out there, someone consumes it and they have no stake in the media being consumed. As any producer will tell you though, that’s not exactly true. Most media creators make things for people to consume in interesting ways that change and shape their lives. I’m talking any type of art, or news, or whatever.
Once you put something out there, it isn’t just the media creators anymore, its put in the fabric of society and starts to shift how other media is created and how society consumes it. Of course, that’s the basic premise of remix culture that’s sort of sprang up.
People need to realize if they’re creating something that the world looks at, they can’t do it SOLELY for the audience. Then, it’s pop music / American Idol, which feels cheap, tasteless and devoid of innovation. (Sorry Seacrest.)
But, if you create SOLELY for your insular group, you’re elitist, snobbish and whatever derogetory adjective you’d like to assign to someone who thinks regular people aren’t worth meddling with.
By giving Obama the prize before any big middle east event has been solved, or we’re actually friends with Iran, or some crisis is averted, it’s saying “we christen you to be the peacemaker.” Which, as a “regular person” feels like they picked Obama because they buy into the hype.
I’m not saying Obama is all hype. I still have high hopes for what’s happening. But, frankly, the effects of Obama-nomics won’t be known for YEARS. The Afghan conflict is intensifying, not becoming more peaceful. I personally believe the Afghan commanders are smarter than they have been in the past, and this troop buildup could be the thing that fixes Afghan for us.
Even with all that, the fact is there’s no tangible evidence that Obama did the most to promote peace, etc. It confuses EVERYONE in the world who sees people get it in the past who are actively doing things get the prize, and then think “yo, I’ve got potential!” even though, sure, we’re not exactly president.
Sometimes people do things for insular reasons because that’s how they think the process works, not realizing that they don’t really own the process. They’re representatives of how we view the world, and their insular process is somehow theoretically correct, but very externally confusing.
I think, on a tangent, that’s what’s been lost in media, right? People have all these private debates about issues and problems which are important to the editorial groups, but on the flipside, they lose general perspective of real people. As a result, we get shitty things like Fox News which are SO on the other side of the fence and being blatantly annoyingly biased, that it makes people sort of try to be more centered. Anyway, people don’t own their creations when the public consumes them. Public facing things need to involve the last party in the process. The public has to be part of the process, I think, (See software, music industry, etc.) or else processes lose credibility and relevance if ignored for too long.
This morning was different / odd… never had a morning like this. I woke up on time, but was really really tired, so made the executive decision to sleep for another hour. Properly set my alarm, etc, and it was fine.
Woke up then… started working, worked for another hour probably, but was still tired, so made another exec decision to sleep for yet another hour.
Then, woke up and felt pretty good.
All in all, it was about 6.5 hours of sleep or so… I think. I went to bed around 9:30 or so, so yeah, got a good amount in.
Frankly, even with the whacky mornings, I can deal with them pretty well, because I really just need to be up to start preparations for the morning show / post a story or two. Whacky mornings are still better than hibernation… because I feel better during the day.
So you know that feeling of exhaustion you get when you don’t sleep enough? I haven’t had that feeling since I started doing polyphasic sleep. Now, I have all sorts of different sensations for my body telling me its time to rest, and I find the vast majority of them much easier to deal with.
For instance, when it’s nap time, my body gives me a little jolt of discomfort, but not to say tiredness or exhaustion. I wish I could describe it, but it’s seriously so much easier to deal with than how I felt when I started this project.
Woke up at 2:00 today… which seems like my golden time.
Rather than try to time my sleep properly (ie 4.5 hours from whenever I go to sleep) I’ve decided 2am is my wake up time, and if I go to bed at 9:30 I’ll sleep for 4.5 hours, and if I go to sleep at 11, I’ll sleep for 3. It seems like it makes waking up easier.
I’m getting through the transition period, and my body is starting to get back to normal. It’s been a rough month, but I’m pretty happy now.
At this point, I’m going to stop guessing what my body wants from me and just go with the flow. Rather than call myself a specific sleeping label, I’m going to go to sleep when I’m tired, and be awake when I’m not. I know the difference between “tired,” “groggy,” “unproductive,” and “awake,” and since I can manage my feelings, I’ll just manage my sleep based on which category I fall into. I’ll sleep when I’m unproductive every time, I’ll debate sleeping when I’m tired, I’ll be awake when I’m groggy, and I’ll naturally not force myself to sleep when I’m awake.
Yesterday, I took two naps. One normal nap at about 11am, and then a really long nap sometime in the afternoon. We’re talking like 2 hours, maybe.
This would be consistant with Biphasic sleep, which as you’d guess is sleeping twice in a day. The author of that post says he does 4.5 hours and 1.5 hours, whereas when I’m polyphasic I do some combination of 3 hours + 3 x naps of 20 min, or 4.5 hours + 2 or 3 20 min naps.
Yesterday, I went to bed at about 10 or 10:30pm, and slept till only 2am (exactly). I beat my alarms, especially since I had them set for later, and woke up immediately.
I’m debating whether to add an exercise routine into my schedule. I think I have the time now, but not sure. If I ever have another person working on TechVi who’s based on the east coast, I’d definitely consider an exercise routine simply because I could do it without drama.
On the flipside, sadly, one thing I haven’t yet added is a regular religious study time. In my religion (Mormonism), it’s encouraged to read and study different scriptures daily, and with all this increased time awake, I’ve definitely added the ability to do the scripture study, but its somehow managed to fall out of my routine into “I don’t have time.” Let this be a lesson to anyone who’s adding time in their schedule: You’ll always have time for what you care about, and you’ll always ignore stuff you don’t prioritize. Yes, this is my self directed call to prioritization.
At this point, I should change to “sort of polyphasic sleep” since today I woke up at 2, then went to sleep till 4:30. Meh, an extra sleep cycle never hurt anyone.
I get the feeling like I’m slowly transitioning to biphasic sleep, despite my best efforts. That’s where you take a long afternoon nap, ala the Spaniards. I’m actually way more awake than I used to be, so that’s good… but I’d prefer to get the 4.5 hours of sleep rathre than the 7.
So I had about a two year stint where I didn’t really write anything in my blog. I just let it sit here, sort of stagnant, while I moved on to more useful tech for updating my friends and family like Facebook, Twitter and for my geeky nerd friends who want to know what I think is funny, I started using Tumblr. About a year ago, when I started writing longer form pieces for Obsessable, I wanted to start writing more on my blog than just a journal. I even started writing in an ACTUAL journal. (Yes, fellow snobs, it’s a Moleskine.)
I think I’m going to have something to say on a more regular basis now, which means I’m going to try to keep my daily polyphasic sleeping updates going as long as they’re relevant (guessing till maybe day 45-60?) but in addition, I’m going to try to ask and answer questions I find interesting on the web. Not as some sort of douchey wannabe blowhard (resisted linking to examples there…), but more to challenge myself as a writer, and to ask/answer questions that could actually help someone out there at large. Most of the questions are going to be technology related, simply because that’s what I eat and breathe, but I’ll likely mix in some biz and personal items as well.
I seriously want to change web video for the better, and while TechVi in its current incarnation isn’t the answer, I’m going to mockup some stuff that I think could be a step in the right direction.
I also plan on writing things on live production, and things I’m doing in my studio to create some crazy crap. I’m sure everyone who’s reading this won’t necessarily stick around, but the people who do will actually find it somewhat interesting, instead of just, well, dormant.
Aaaand we’re back.
Thankfully, I’ve managed to get back on the schedule. The solution? My same solution from days of yore… managing sleep cycles.
Y’see, according to widely available published research, the body tends to sleep on cycles of about 90 minutes or so. Each cycle includes (at least) four stages of sleep (that we know about.) The last stage, REM sleep, is the one that gets the most love. The other four stages are just as important (allegedly.)
Regardless, waking up at a 90 minute interval is, for me anyway, the difference between groggy-fail and success. It’s like the ideal time for my alarm clock to go off, because when I wake up, I’m not in some sort of sleep-induced coma that makes me feel like I should keep sleeping / ignore my alarm clock / start cuddlefest 2009. Instead, I get up immediately, and with little side effects. (I’m actually completely awake, and have been since I opened my eyes.)
So the solution for me waking up on time today was to set my alarm exactly 270 minutes from when I was serious about sleeping. As everyone knows, going to bed, and being serious about sleeping are two different beasts. I went to bed yesterday, talked to my wife for a really long time, and then when I was serious about sleeping, I took my iPod and set the alarm on it 4.5 hours from the current time. In this case, it was about 10:10 or so… so I set the alarm for 2:40.
Previously, when I was a hibernator (aka monophaser) I’d sleep about 8 hours a night, which left me feeling awful and oversleeping. I then switched to sleeping 7.5 hours a night, and just by chopping off that extra half an hour, I felt more awake and alert than before. The only problem? If I left my alarm set for a specific time and ended up tossing and turning, I’d have grog-tastic mornings.
Since I’m purposefully scheduling my day to allow me a giant morning buffer for now, somewhere in the order of 4 hours of buffer time allotted, I’m going to focus primarily on 4.5 hours of sleep whenever possible. If I, somehow, run out of time and feel like I can’t hit 4.5, I’m going to set the ol’ alarm for 3 and do a 3 nap day. Though, I can’t really imagine staying awake until 2am and sleeping from 2-5 to be up in time for my 6am pst / 9am est show.
Polyphasic sleeping has done another wonderful thing for me… the ability to fall asleep nearly instantaneously. If I lay down now, I fall asleep almost immediately. Literally, I’m talking whenever. If its nap time, sleep time, or whatever time. I do have a little bit of a strategy though. I know the awake side of my brain is super cognitive, and relies on things like speech, reading and the sort. So rather than rely on that side of my brain when I fall asleep, I try to turn off my internal monologue by exclusively visualizing. I consciously try to simply see an item, place, person or anything, and not even think of the label associated with whatever I’m viewing, but instead start running through a list of items and places at random. Yesterday, for some reason, it started with cleats, progressed to a soccer ball, and then took a turn at random as I remembered my parents’ new home in Southern Utah; a home which I’ve only visited and never lived.
Between the concoction of the visualizing sleep pattern, which ships me into dreamland in no-time, and setting a sleep-cycle timed alarm clock, I’m actually awake with relative ease.
As an aside, I’ve heard of regular people who only sleep for 4.5 hours all together, so I think its not totally unheard of that it’d be possible to just skip the naps for 4.5 hours of sleeping. And, to be clear, I’m officially switching to everyman2, where I essentially skip my morning nap in favor of naps at 11 and 5. (Which, by the way, may switch to 10 and 5 to make them a shade more equidistant.)
Regardless, I’m super stoked about the new sleep schedule / cycle. Especially, since I’m awake fully now, and hoping I don’t oversleep anymore as long as I time my alarm clock properly. Also, no more sleeping in for the time being. I need to make sure my body is committed to polyphasic before I start testing the waters with sleeping in on weekends.
Oof… so I should rename this “monophasic sleep.”
I think I woke up and turned off my iPod… because I simply have no idea where it is right now. I ended up going to bed right around 10pm, and I slept till 4:30. 6.5-ish hours.
SO yeah, I’m back to monophasic basically. I’ll be napping today at 11am and 5pm, just like usual, hoping to wake up tomorrow in a standard polyphasic time. We’ll see if it works.
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